George Benson People Quotations

I have not heard a whole lot of the rock genre. I tell you what knocked me out though. I was in Holland and I went to a Robbie Williams concert. There were 50,000 people there. That was an eye-opener.

I study the Bible constantly. I teach the Bible. You know, I'm a Bible conductor, and I have a lot of people studies. But also, I see how small things really help people to get over humps in their life. Gives them direction.

R&B music became gigantic with people like Marvin Gaye and Barry White and Curtis Mayfield who became superstars. We tried to find a place where Jazz belonged because we didn't sell records.

Don't forget the late '70s was dominated by people like the Queen of Disco Donna Summer and everybody who was in that bag. We were already in dance mode, the Bee Gees were out with the most fantastic record the world had ever heard, so the world was in the mode. Anything outside of that mode was secondary.

People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.

The melody is the most important thing that must stay in the minds of the people who listen to you. No matter how many notes you play, you can't let them forget what the song is.